This is all about when a job goes wrong, when corporate America is left to run things with no responsibility whatsoever. Please feel free to comment and commiserate. I'm sure I'll be in need of a co-author to the book this just _has_ to become.

15 November 2007

"Dude, I really don't know"

At BigHugeCo, I install software. A lot of it. But I don't use it. I'll go as far as to say Dreamweaver and Office are the only two apps I know well enough to troubleshoot. So when someone calls and asks me "What does it mean when I can't see my database in Microsoft ResourceHog 2007?"

"It means," I say, "you need to enter your settings, which I don't have because we don't support the app. The database admins do."

"So you'll help me?"

"I'm not a database admin. I'm a desktop technician."

"But you build web pages."

"Those are not databases, and I don't do that for BigHugeCo."

"So how do I fix this?"

"I don't know. Ask the database admins."

"Well, could you fix this for me?"

"Hold, please." Mute phone. Bang head against desk. Go to Starbucks on the lobby level. Return. He's still holding.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I can relate to that. I just started a new job a few weeks ago. My supervisor only allows me to do the simple jobs after he looks at them and tells me I can do them. So every day, the same people that bring in orders come up to me and ask me to take care of them. This is despite the fact that every time they do this, I tell them they need to bring the order to my supervisor. Then they give this look like I'm a lazy slacker. Even my manger and department head do this. My manager goes so far as to tell I have to learn some time, which is true. The problem is the orders he brings in need to be done in a hurry and if I mess it up it will make me look really bad and set the company back pretty hard, which would probably result in my termination. Got to love the corporate world.